


Flared Skull

by HarmoniaChimera



Series: The Machine [2]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Amputation, Conflict, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Drug Abuse, Drug-Induced Sex, F/M, Forgiveness, Ghoul Sex, Ghouls, Guilt, Harm to Animals, Heavy Angst, Period-Typical Racism, Rape, Self-Hatred, Veterinary Medicine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-16
Updated: 2019-04-16
Packaged: 2020-01-14 21:17:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18484534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarmoniaChimera/pseuds/HarmoniaChimera
Summary: When Dogmeat gets hurt, emotions run high. Aina runs her mouth and Hancock gets high. In the end, they all say and do things they'll regret forever.





	Flared Skull

**Author's Note:**

> **Warning:** This is pretty heavy and full of triggers. But also happens to drive the rest of the series...
> 
> Also, written and translated a long time ago, so please forgive me if it's really bad style-wise :(

“Where’s Dogmeat?”

There was a hole in Nick’s skull, right about where the Gunner’s rifle hit it, drizzling violet drops of undetermined liquid. The synth was visibly struggling to make contact with reality, but he had found them on his own. He shouldn’t have trouble with short-term memory.

“Nick, where is Dogmeat?” How is it possible that Nick, injured, got back to them, and the dog didn’t? Aina knew perfectly well how that could be possible, but she didn’t let any such thought linger.

“My head’s splitting…” The android lowered himself heavily onto the side of a slope and touched his head with his robotic fingers but not even close to the defect. Aina looked at Hancock, terror in her eyes, but he was already far away, circling the vicinity in wide berths, looking for Dogmeat among the tufts of high grass and on the horizon. Aina caught only a glance of his tense, determined face. In that one moment she loved him more than ever. He all but reminded her of… She reached to the wedding rings on her neck before she realized they weren’t there anymore—Hancock had sold them somewhere in Goodneighbor, after all, when they last paid a visit there. She had bid farewell to the last thing she had of Nate’s; when would she finally bid farewell to the memory of him and fully commit herself to Hancock?

And where the hell was Dogmeat?

“Nick,” she whispered, crouching in front of the confused synth, “I’ll fix your temple as soon as we make a stop somewhere for long enough for me to take out my tools; but I’m begging you, try to remember. We got separated. Dogmeat was with you. Where is he now?”

“What?” The android finally seemed to compute her words. “But he was just behind…” He turned and, understanding his mistake, jumped to his feet, even though he barely kept his balance. He rushed ahead, in a completely different direction than the one he came to them from. “Dogmeat! DOGMEAT!”

“No, Nick!” Aina grabbed his arm and stopped him mid-step before he could fall into some ravine and rough himself up even more. Hancock, who had by now wandered pretty far out, turned to them at the sound of Nick’s shouting, so she raised a hand to let him know not to worry, ‘You two alright?’ ‘No, but I’ve got it.’ Hancock seemed to have understood her message perfectly ‘cause he looked at them for another moment and then began to disappear down the other side of a hill. Aina took Nick by the arm and they walked slowly in that direction so that she could constantly see the ghoul treading his arches through the tufts of grassy stubs which were lost in Nick’s hand when he slid the woody stalks between his polymeric fingers with a scrape comparable to scratching on a school blackboard.

“Nick, is everything alright?” Aina asked, trying to divert his attention, but to no avail.

The synth caught another plant, let it grind unpleasantly along with her teeth, and finally turned his half-empty gaze to her, as if he couldn’t do two things at once, and then he replied, “Yes, it’s fii… aii…” before he fell like a log into the tall grass with another series of scrapes. Hancock stuck his bayonet into the ground to mark where he stopped and ran back to help Aina turn Nick on his back. Nick was still conscious, but his gaze was empty when he looked at her, like he didn’t recognize her at all. Aina was already going through her bag in search of her tools. Hancock held the android’s head up so the hole would stay clean and accessible. They didn’t say a word. They worked in silence to finish as quickly as possible; the situation was too dire to allow for chatting. If Dogmeat didn’t make it back, he most certainly wasn’t able to—which meant he was badly injured… or worse. Nick picked a terrible time to lose his head.

Who would’ve thought the Gunners would fuck them up so badly… Aina’s wounds closed after two stimpaks, but Hancock still had a bleeding hole in his arm where he was hit with a bullet penetrating so effectively that it took a piece of his flesh with it on its way out—and the stimpaks didn’t deal well with that at all. The woman analyzed data, weighed options, and worked out a plan of action, all while her hands maneuvered in Nick’s head with the experience of the numerous times she’d had to fix his mechanical brain before, and Hancock, too, was helping her with the skill of a man who had more than once played the self-appointed, impromptu role of assistance for various doctors and mechanics. They weren’t free of accidents, though—a few times Hancock got smacked by unconscious Nick’s hand when Aina slipped, which he commented on only with annoyed looks; and Aina got electrocuted to the point where she couldn’t move her entire arm for a moment when the rubber end slipped off her tweezers. Soon enough, however, Nick turned back on and sat up with some effort, even though Aina was still closing his skull wound with synthetic resin.

“You alive, buddy?” Hancock asked, putting his hand on Nick’s shoulder. Nick nodded weakly.

“Answer,” Aina mumbled, still focused. “I wanna hear how well you do speaking.”

“I’m alive,” Nick replied, albeit a bit hoarse. “How’s Dogmeat?”

“We’re still looking.” Aina knew everything she needed about his memory now, too. “Which is why we need to get moving as soon as you’re rested.”

“I’m a synth; let’s go.” He got up almost like he was jerking up from a nightmare and quickly went over to Hancock’s bayonet like he hadn’t just spent fifteen minutes lying lifelessly on the ground. Aina exchanged glances with Hancock as they both followed him.

“Do you remember anything that could be of help?” Aina asked, taking one last look at his skull. There was nothing leaking or chipping off. Good.

“I know something, but I don’t know what,” Nick replied but pressed on at a pace that suggested he had some sort of a goal. Hancock, bayonet in hand, stepped a few paces away to cover more ground. “They were shooing him away… somehow…” Nick kept mumbling. “They ran after him, all at once… so he ran… And I came for you, to find him, but then…”

“It’s alright now.” Aina put her hand on his shoulder. “Lead us where you feel is right. Dogmeat’s surely gonna be somewhere along the way.”

Nick wandered chaotically all around as if he couldn’t decide whether he preferred to go along the river bank, or maybe through the middle of the field. Hancock paid no mind to that and returned to pacing out circles in the corn. Aina only looked around and diverted Nick in a different direction as needed, like when he went straight for the river a few mirelurks were just getting out of.

They went on like that for almost half an hour. The landscape changed gradually, grass turned into shrubbery and dwarf trees, the river meandered away—or maybe they meandered away from it And the moment they saw several houses in the distance, they were attacked by the first feral.

Hancock took it out with one clean shot before Aina even drew her gun. They exchanged glances and picked up the pace. Ferals never bode well. Nick, though, was so focused he didn’t seem to give a shit; he only kept going until Aina took him to task.

“I know ferals won’t devour you, Nick, but they’d still probably happily tear an arm or two off of you,” she mumbled as they walked. Another ghoul jumped out of one of the cabins and got rewarded with a bullet straight to the forehead. By then Hancock was mowing down a small crowd of his fellows with the usual mix of rage and misery in his eyes; and when he was done with them, he finally came over to Aina.

“We’ve gotta be close,” he said. “They gather in such groups only when they find food.”

Aina shuddered at the word. Dogmeat, food? What had gotten into Hancock to level Dogmeat with nothing more than carrion? She picked up the pace, leaving her companions behind. If there was even the smallest chance of finding him, she wasn’t going to give up.

“Aina!” Hancock shouted suddenly, so she stopped mid-step and looked back, rolling her eyes, just to see they were both a good twenty paces behind her. Hancock was just taking aim, but Nick was quicker; the feral that was just reaching towards her lost its arm and soon after, its head. Hancock rushed to her and, looking for wounds, started bitching, “Are you insane? We have to stick together, not march through the woods trampling the litter and stomping like a rhino! Just another…”

“How would you even, Hancock, know what a rhino is?”

The ghoul choked on whatever he was gonna say, blinked, fell silent. Aina snorted at him for good measure and would’ve kept moving, except Nick just came closer, hunkering down, gesturing to a gathering some ways away. The woman grabbed her sniper rifle to see better through the scope even as her heart raced with fear.

Almost two dozen ferals were swarming in one place, tearing something from one another’s hands, exchanging it, fighting over it, and pushing each other around; it was only after a while that Aina understood they were arguing so over a detached limb. Dogmeat was there, lying motionless a few paces further, blood seeping slowly out of a stump of a front leg. Aina’s heart stopped beating whatsoever and fell to her stomach.

“Hancock,” she whispered, “Dogmeat’s there. Go see if he’s still alive, if… if there’s any point in attacking them.”

Hancock gritted his teeth but went down the hill. The ferals shouldn’t attack him if he didn’t make a move to take away their prey. A few less perceptive ones, who didn’t notice he wasn’t human, jumped at him, but hit the ground two steps in, Aina’s bullets in their heads. Sit her high up, hand her a sniper rifle, and… Hancock was overcome a disturbing rush of heat when he realized she could just as easily take him out, too. And he just turned his back to her. He could almost feel the burning of the sights on the back of his neck. And then it didn’t matter anymore as the ferals let him through without protest. Poor Dogmeat raised his head to him and let out a pained whimper.

How could he have thought this attempt so pointless?! Hancock fell to his knees next to the dog, whispered words of comfort, squeezed the stump to try and staunch the profuse bleeding. The crowd of ferals around soon broke up, scattered, strewn on the ground, or cut down by Aina and Nick coming in hot toward him and Dogmeat. Aina looked like her worst nightmares just came true.

“Shit! Those fucking ghouls!” She cried in anger, throwing the gun away and kneeling next to them. “Oh, my God, Dogmeat… My poor baby… What have those bastards done to you…”

As soon as she put a tourniquet on Dogmeat’s stump of a leg, Hancock got up and stepped away from them both. He had an unsettling inkling that Nick was giving him curious looks, so he turned the other way. It wasn’t her fault, he kept saying to himself, she got scared, she wasn’t thinking. But no amount of reason was enough. He couldn’t shake away the gooey, relentless conviction that only now, in this moment when emotions took over, she let herself speak what she truly thought, truly believed all this time. It was just as he suspected. And he was just letting himself believe that… But there was no time for that now.

“We need to take him to Bunker Hill,” he threw over his shoulder. “Only Kay can help him now.”

Aina nodded mindlessly, completely unaware of all the curses he had for her in his mind. Nick lifted Dogmeat in his arms and they walked back to the city in silence broken only by the dog’s occasional whimper, but soon even that quieted when he lost consciousness as Aina gently stroked his head. Nick’s coat was already streaked with his blood.

Hancock, weapon at the ready, walked a few paces before them, taking out everything that dared to come closer. A mirelurk raised its head out of the marsh and immediately turned to ash and fell back into the mud; a small group of Raiders barely raised their guns and were already dead. A lone feral jumped out at them and dropped to the ground when Hancock put a bullet in its skull, hurrying them along before they met more. And he could’ve sworn he heard Aina’s voice saying ‘more fucking ghouls’ again, even though her lips didn’t move at all. He picked up the pace.

In the city, they switched tactics—they walked close together, changed directions at the very sight of supermutants, and tried their best to evade any other enemies, and if they couldn’t, they took them out as quietly as possible. More than anything, they wanted to avoid confrontation, what with Nick carrying Dogmeat, when every bullet shot could call upon them hordes of the worst varieties of scum. They still managed to move efficiently enough despite that and covered the couple of miles to Bunker Hill in about ten minutes, rushed by Dogmeat’s labored breathing and going more and more limp in Nick’s arms. When they climbed the stairs to the gate, blood was already dripping from the makeshift bandage.

“Stop,” Kessler snarled, blocking Aina’s way. “Do you really think I’m gonna let you back in here after what you’ve done? I should shoot you on the spot.”

Aina gritted her teeth and threw a quick look at Dogmeat and Nick. She didn’t even grace Hancock with a glance. He mindlessly clenched his fist.

“I don’t have time for this, Kessler. Dogmeat’s badly injured.” But when Aina took another step, the woman blocked her way again. Their hands went to their holsters as if they had rehearsed this. Hancock, just in case, almost automatically reached for his, but he had to wonder: did he want to protect Dogmeat, or had she cast such a strong spell on him he was willing to put down his life for her? Even when she didn’t deserve it at all. Not recently, at least.

“The Institute’s whores aren’t welcome here.” Kessler’s voice hadn’t gotten any less hostile, especially when Aina was still pressing against her outstretched arm, making it very clear she wasn’t going to give up.

“What about Railroad’s whores?” Aina asked, tone _almost_ teasing.

“Sure, like I’m gonna believe you’re on Railroad’s side when I saw you with my own two eyes bringing the Institute synths here to wipe us out!” Kessler spat all that out in one breath and huffed angrily for another while; she looked like she was just about to knock Aina down and kick her senseless. Hancock glanced at Dogmeat. Nick was pacing impatiently, looking around for another way to slip through the gate.

Aina, though, was already pissed enough to mumble, “Yes, you stupid fuck! I work for the Institute ‘cause Des needed an agent on the inside to bring them down. Now, if you’ll excuse me, my dog’s dying.” She shoved Kessler aside and went straight in, with Nick and Hancock following close. “KAY!”

The vet was already waiting for them, finishing up the prep she’d probably begun halfway through their argument. By her instructions, Nick laid Dogmeat down on the bedding. Kay looked at him and made a truly unsettling grimace; Aina was beside herself with worry. And Hancock couldn’t bear to look at it all.

“That’ll be tough,” Kay mumbled, taking a look into Dogmeat’s mouth as she listened to their story. “He lost a lotta blood and to get him back in shape, I’ll need access to the wound… Come here, help me out; hold this, but squeeze really hard.”

Aina, feeling like she understood less and less every second, obeyed Kay’s commands readily without so much as a ‘why’. She was thinking solely about Dogmeat getting through this. He didn’t have to be perfect. He didn’t have to have all the limbs. He could become a three-legged cripple. As long as he lived. She wasn’t going to let someone she cared about die alone and in pain again. She wasn’t going to leave him this time.

Kay worked in silence and with a proficiency of what looked like years of treating the somewhat uncommon Commonwealth dogs. Aina couldn’t wrap her head around that. Did dogs work just like the brahmins? Like humans? Well, mechanically, they’re sure to be different. If it were a machine…

_No! Dogmeat’s no machine. And Kay knows what she’s doing. Fuck off her work with your engineering, girl._

“Aina?” Kay said in such a calm voice that Aina didn’t even think to freak out. The vet was reaching such places with her curved needle that she was completely rebuilding the whole stump. Aina, strangely, had some trouble focusing her gaze on her.

“Hmm?”

Kay nodded towards the stump she was still stitching up. “I did everything I could with the tools I have. He’ll live, don’t worry about that, but it’s probably gonna take quite some time to heal. I had to file his bone down, so, well, I don’t see how he could ever walk properly again, unless you get him some kind of… advanced prosthetic.”

Aina knew very well what Kay was getting at. Dogmeat’s only chance to function normally was with the Institute. Except the Institute didn’t really give a shit about any animals except the ones they _made_ themselves. Aina swallowed the bitter taste down as Kay talked about blood loss, recovery, long rest.

“I’ll be fine for now. Go get some rest. Take a short walk or something. But since Kessler probably won’t be particularly partial towards letting you guys back in here, it’s probably best if you stay at least until he regains consciousness. I’m sure you’ll find yourselves a place.” She looked up from Dogmeat to meet Atya’s eye. “Seriously, go. I’ll have Nick to help me if I need anything.”

Aina hesitated; something inside wanted her to protest. She wasn’t going to leave him this time. But Kay didn’t look like a woman who’d accept a refusal right now, so Aina, against herself, nodded and left the shed. She also worked best when there was no one hanging over her head. Nick pulled her in close but… Something was missing.

Nick mumbled words of comfort as he held her and she nodded mindlessly, trying to stop the racing thoughts. No matter how Kay calmed her, there was no way she could stop worrying. Kay didn’t kick her out so that she didn’t see Dogmeat die, did she? But… She’d started with Dogmeat but now that the risk had lessened…

“Where’s Hancock?” she asked quietly. Her strength was gone along with the adrenaline. She couldn’t do anything else for Dogmeat. There was nothing pushing her to act. Except… “Nick? Have you seen Hancock?”

“Aina, give him some time,” Nick said calmly. She looked up at him incomprehensively. “Hancock’s in a bad mood, so he holed up in the basement and he’s probably doing drugs. Give him some time, he’ll come back.”

“But…” She looked over at the sorry picture of Dogmeat getting bandaged up and then back at Nick. Small pricks of anger and hurt were starting to poke at the back of her mind. “Why?”

Nick didn’t answer. She stepped away with a sigh, taking one last look at her dog. There was a whole cyclone of feelings raging inside her and she had no idea what to do with any of them. But she did know one thing.

‘Give him some time’. Hmph. That was a good one.

The basements of Bunker Hill were enveloped in semi-darkness. The only lights were spaced out way too sparsely for her taste: small fluorescent lamps, old construction reflectors, industrial bulbs swaying dismally like dead men at a Raider camp. Aina walked slowly, every step carefully measured—she remembered very clearly the flooring here consisted of nothing more than ground tamped down by dozens of feet and that it still sometimes gave in. She descended farther and farther underground, led by rusty stairs and tunnels so terribly secured their brick walls crumbled like sand castles. Actually, it was almost like a sand castle. She trembled. Her thoughts were accompanied only by the ceaseless dripping from the leaking pipes and valves.

The ground was strewn with metal bodies of second-gen synths, left over from the infamous siege of Bunker Hill she brought upon them. God. So many people died back then. Suddenly and completely irrationally, her head was filled with the image of little Shaun in his crib, Nate in front of the TV; she heard a knock on the door. When she woke up that morning, she didn’t expect... She was absolutely certain it would be an average day, that she and Nate would take Shaun for a walk, that they’d look for Razor again, that... She’d never have thought that one single day would lead to her being the most respected and feared murderer in the entire sta— the entire Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

She glanced over her shoulder to make sure Nick hadn’t followed her here and didn’t have to look at his dead fellows scattered on the ground. Still, she knew he wouldn’t even let out a sigh, wouldn’t show any emotion; he’d just stare at them with a gaze as empty as empty a Gen-2's gaze can get.

She ran upstairs. She didn’t even try to stifle her panting, she just rushed in there like a desperate teenage girl running late to her date with Na— with her beloved. She stopped mid-step, enclosed in that big blue pipe, and smashed her fist against the metal wall. She hated herself.

She continued, much slower, down into the tunnel that began looking way more like the red pre-War basements, until she reached that old demolished kitchen where she once tried to talk to the synths she had saved. It took her a moment to notice Hancock curled up between the fridge and some shelves, rocking back and forth. Around him, on the ground, lay three empty Psycho syringes.

“Hancock?” she said softly, trying to keep calm. There was no reaction; he didn’t even twitch. “John?” She slowly approached, circling around the aged, dirty counter. “John, it’s me, Aina. Can you hear me?”

Only then did he raise his head, looking at her like a rabid dog, like he was just about to jump at her with teeth bared. Her heart raced and she fell back, almost hitting the shelf. Hancock got up slowly, his furious gaze still on her throat. He stared at her with the same primal rage as when she had tried to stop him from killing that Institute spy in Goodneighbor. She was weak under that gaze and the memory of that guy’s open skull and her aching cheek, and Hancock’s lips whispering ‘I’m sorry’s even as his other hand was still aiming at the twitching body. She threw a frantic glance around, but thankfully John had left his weapons someplace he couldn’t reach them in this state.

“Why did you say that?” he asked suddenly, quietly, angrily; at first, Aina didn’t know what he meant—but then she remembered the moment when she first thought something was off about Hancock. Her brow furrowed with dismay, but for the drugs in Hancock’s system it was an admission of guilt. He reached for her, trying to grab her arm, but she ducked; he squinted, and she felt a wave of terror.

“Hancock… John…” she whimpered, trying to inch away slow enough he wouldn’t notice she was running. “My love, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean for it to sound that way…”

“Yeah, but it did,” Hancock said. “What now?”

“I’m sorry, I’m really sorry, John... I didn’t mean anything bad, just...” And in this moment she must’ve taken a step too far because Hancock suddenly growled and grabbed her neck so tightly and accurately her voice got caught in her throat, and before she even wheezed, she was already against the wall, already the plasterless bricks were digging painfully into her spine, already Hancock’s fingers were tightening even more...

“John… please…” she croaked, fighting for every breath, digging claws into his wrist, trying to pry his fingers away… Anything to break free, calm Hancock down, be able to breathe again. But he, furious and blinded by rage, threw her on the mattresses—Aina felt a sharp pain in her jaw as it hit the wall; blood flowed from her lip. But she didn’t even have a moment to care about it as Hancock grabbed her hip and pulled them up. Only then did she start to thrash around, realizing what was about to happen.

“Please, John, get a hold of yourself…” she whimpered, but when she glanced over her shoulder, she could see it in his eyes: his mind was completely overtaken by Psycho and he was thoroughly deaf to her begging. Fear squeezed her throat, tears filled her eyes. Hancock was still grabbing at her, pushing away her more and more desperate attempts to fight him off and overcoming her struggling with strange ease. She threw herself around, but it was in vain. She cried, but he didn’t listen. She tried to pull free, but she was too weak. Tears in her eyes and ache in her heart, she even reached for her weapon, but he twisted her arm all the way up to her shoulders and, to the sound of her scream, stripped her pants down.

She knew what was about to happen. She had lost all hope that Hancock would somehow see through. The only thing she could expect from him now was the one that hurt even when he was gentle and she was willing. The only thing she could _do_ was accept it. She did deserve it, after all. And nobody would hear her screams anyway.

And a scream did tear through her throat but not in the slightest as painfully as Hancock’s manhood tore through her. Against her better judgment, she tried to get away again, but he pressed her shoulders to the mattress, paying her just about as much mind as one pays to a writhing fish just before once hacks off its head when preparing it for dinner. She was just a means to an end for him now and she knew nothing could change that. Pain, so overwhelming it seemed impossible, her cries and screams, and his huge violence tugging at her from within, and that progressive stupor, like her mind trying to hide within itself and stop feeling, knowing, remembering.

She could feel the cold of her own numb hand on her heated forehead, her salty-sweet tears shattering against her fingers. She deserved it. She did. She deserved to have her inside turned outside by his brutality, as if he was impaling her and tearing off pieces of her just to force them in her throat in the form of burning sobs. She deserved it. In her thoughts, she apologized to Hancock that not all of them belonged to him, and, cries her only protest, she accepted her punishment. Every thrust, she reflexively begged dead Nate for help and immediately hated herself for still thinking about him first after all those years; and then she thought about Hancock raping her, and like a mantra she kept thinking: _I love him, I love him, I love him, I love him.”_

And just as she managed to fall into that sweet, painless state of numbness, to give in to the strangely friendly lethargy, to see the creeping darkness, he thrust into her way too hard, all at once, and then again, and through all that pain running up her nerves she jerked her head back and froze. Just next to her eye, there was a metal bar sticking out from the wall.

And then he thrust again, just as hard as the last time, and she screamed just as loud as the last time, and in the last desperate impulse she turned her head; and like in slow motion, she could feel the rusted, broken bar squeezing through her skin layer after layer, tardily, so as not to spare a single cell, and finally reaching her mouth as something metallic flooded her tongue, and she couldn’t tell if it was iron from the blood or the rust—her lips parted in a wet scream, Hancock thrust into her again, the sharp end of the bar plowed through her tongue and hit the other side, and the pain flowed through the root all the way to the jaw. Blood dripped down her chin.

With every thrust the bar dug deeper and deeper into her gum, scraped against her enamel with a sickening, head-cracking grind, and left new marks of blood and rust on her tongue. And again. And again. Pain assaulted her from all sides. She was surrounded. She jerked in some desperate attempt, but her arm was still firmly pressed to her shoulder blades and it was impossible to move even an inch. Her mind was slowly, dangerously giving in to the void. No. No. She couldn’t let that happen. She couldn’t take it anymore. With the utmost effort she caught the bar between her teeth, shut her jaw as hard as she could, just to make it stop, so she’d still have a mouth by the end of this since she didn’t have anything else; but Hancock, or rather what was left of him, thrust into her again, violently, and the hope it would all end soon shattered along with her tooth, with a disgusting crack and blood flooding her throat and her face, and another wave of the overwhelming, radiating, sickening pain.

And then—his moves seemed to slow down, his grasp seemed to weaken, and Aina took her numb, shaking arm out from between his fingers, her face off the metal bar, and spat out blood and pieces of her former molar. Hancock suddenly disappeared. The world had imploded. She tried to take her foggy, blurry gaze off of the small puddle of blood tears, and saliva speckled with bright pieces of the tooth, but somehow, she couldn’t find anything else worth looking at. Her knees gave in and her hips heavily hit the mattress.

She leaned against the damp, cold wall. She felt blood dripping from her chin—and elsewhere. She wanted to wipe the thick layer of moisture off her face but she was too weak to raise her hand. If she focused, she could hear Hancock’s heavy yet incredibly quiet breathing, as if her tried to pant without attracting attention. There was something trying to burst her heart open.

“I’m sorry,” she whimpered as a sob flared up in her throat again; she did notice, however, that Hancock suddenly got up and stormed towards the exit. He didn’t say a word.

“John!” she said, she thought, desperately, but she must’ve spat so much venom along with it that he stopped mid-step, though he still didn’t dare to face her. She sighed, sore all over. “If you leave me here alone, I swear I’ll never forgive you.”

Only then did he look straight at her. His jaw was tense, but his eyes glistened with tears. That split second was enough for Aina to know exactly what was going on in his head. “...You shouldn’t forgive me.” He shut his eyes, trying to force the tears back. He was mad with himself, and that anger fought inside him with his love for her. Aina remembered what he did for her because of that love. She had to force herself, but she ran all the good moments and some of the bad, too, under her eyelids. There was a lot of tears and even more blood but it was all theirs. Only theirs. She raised her gaze at him.

“But I want to.” Another weakening stab of pain sent a wave of shivers down her spine. She forced herself to look at him with something resembling playfulness. “If you don’t wanna help, at least don’t make it harder.” And after a split second of desperate internal fight, she just burst out crying again.

“I don’t understand why,” he said in that empty voice of his, clenching his fists. He wanted to come closer and comfort her, she knew he did, but he was afraid to hurt her even more. Psycho wasn’t completely out of his system yet. And if he only thought about that, he remembered what he did to her. “I intend to hate myself for the rest of my life.”

“Go ahead,” she said through the tears, “but I don’t.”

“...Why?” The pain in his voice was almost palpable. Aina gathered up her own.

“BECAUSE I LOVE YOU, YOU FUCKED UP SON OF A BITCH!” she yelled. There was a sharp sting in her cheek. Blood flowed from out of her, but only blood. He’d stopped himself, she realized. He’d stopped himself on his own. “And I’m going to forgive you eventually, whether you fucking like it or not!”

Hancock turned around and left so fast he seemed spooked by her rage and what she could do to him—or herself. Or what he could do to himself. For a long, terribly long while Aina sat there in the pain- and dark-filled silence interrupted only by the ceaseless dripping from the leaky pipes and valves. Then, in the distance, she heard quiet steps. Aina opened her swollen eyes just in time to see Nick entering the room. He took one quick glance on the mattress and the view she presented, and immediately knew Hancock hadn’t lied straight to his face. His jaw tensed, giving his robotic face an inscrutable expression, as he crossed the room in three steps and pulled her into his mechanical arms. Aina burst out sobbing into his once-white shirt. Nick, as if he understood what had happened here and what was going on in her head, and what she really wanted, didn’t speak a single word. He only wrapped her in his coat marred with Dogmeat’s darkened, dry blood, and kissed her tenderly on the forehead. She felt a sting of a stimpak on her thigh. He wiped her face with a damp cloth; there was a burning sensation of a disinfectant on her cheek. Then she let him pull her to her feet and lead her slowly out of the basement. And the closer they were to the exit, the more pressing was the one, pesky question.

“Nick? Where’s Hancock?”

Nick didn’t answer.

Only when they stepped out into the sunlight and Nick pressed gently on the small of her back to lead her to Dogmeat, Aina understood. Hancock was kneeling in front of the unconscious dog with his head hanging low, as if asking him for forgiveness for what he did to her. Tears pricked at Aina’s eyelids. She walked towards them so slowly it seemed to be through a river of tar. Hancock twitched ever so slightly when he heard her, but he didn’t dare raise his gaze. She sat across from him. Dogmeat’s breathing was calm and steady below them. Tears flowed in streams down Hancock’s face, his fists clenched on the hat in his lap. He loved her. He killed for her. He held her and rocked her for hours on end when she mourned what she had lost. He cared for her. He protected her. And she loved him and his sass, and his junkiness, and his sense of humor, and his sense of _honor_ , and his fear of failure.

Her tongue obsessively kept returning to her broken tooth. She impatiently wiped new waves of tears away. Nate could never equal him. Nate killed because he was told to, not because he wanted to protect the weak and the miserable. Nate didn’t walk out on his home, his family, and his whole identity to prove to strangers that he was on their side. Nate, a soldier with a loving family, who served in glory and still had it in him to build a very comfortable life together with her, could never—she only now truly understood—never even dream of matching that deformed, crazy junkie who sat now before her with his eyes focused on the bloody stump of a dog’s leg and cried for everybody he wasn’t able to protect from himself.

Slowly and gently, she put her hand on his flared skull.


End file.
